


Cat-Ra: Prank Buddies

by Peyton_Helix



Category: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)
Genre: Also Dr. Strangelove, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Cross-Posted on FanFiction.Net, Fluff and Humor, Gen, Humor, Pranks and Practical Jokes, References to Shakespeare, Slightly OOC characters, just the one though
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-03
Updated: 2019-11-03
Packaged: 2021-01-21 12:02:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,035
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21299147
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Peyton_Helix/pseuds/Peyton_Helix
Summary: Based on Cat-Ra by Monokub. Catra; warrior of the Rebellion and inheritor of the mantle of She-Ra, Princess of Power, and Princess Frosta of the Kingdom of Snows have been working on slowly patching up their rocky relationship. The trouble is that they are doing this by pulling pranks on everyone else in the Alliance when and where they can. Hijinks ensue.
Comments: 7
Kudos: 18





	Cat-Ra: Prank Buddies

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Cat-Ra](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17924693) by [Monokub](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Monokub/pseuds/Monokub). 

> A/N: Hello there. Welcome to my first attempt at fan fiction squared! That is to say, a fan fiction of a fan fiction. It's been a labour of love working on this, based entirely on an off-hand comment from the author of the original fan fiction, so let's see if it measures up as something entertaining for fans of that story.
> 
> And on that note, I should make clear that this story is set in the same world as Cat-Ra by Monokub. If you have not read through their story (and there is a lot of story to read through, let me tell you), then I would advise you to go through that first, otherwise characters being where they are and how they are compared to the actual show won't make the blindest bit of sense. Also, it's simply a good story, so go and enjoy it for its own merits!
> 
> For those of you who are up to date with Monokub's epic, this story was published about halfway through their work on Season 2, episode 2. In terms of where it fits in season 2's sequence of events, I wrote it so it could fit somewhere in the nebulous time periods between what would be episodes 3 and 4, or 4 and 5.
> 
> This story is really only semi-canon to Monokub's own work. To make a comparison with the show, if Monokub's story is equivalent to the show, then this story is equivalent to the YouTube short videos, such as Swift Wind Adventures or the Princess Rebel Recruitment videos.
> 
> I need to give massive thanks and credit to Monokub, firstly for suggesting I write this, but also for co-writing segments of it with suggestions for dialogue and an entire scene (the time-out), and for proof reading it all before I published it for folks to read. I also want to thank Peterson Muldoon for drawing a piece of wonderful fan art for Cat-Ra on Instagram that inspired the ending of this fic, and for allowing me to use the inspiration in that way.
> 
> AND this is my first fic posted on AO3, since I want this story to reach everyone who can access Monokub's original with their preferred site and format.
> 
> But enough exposition. On with the story. Please enjoy.

Shall I tell you, reader, of the days of the greatest terror to ever befall the Rebellion, and the Princess Alliance? This terror would test those mighty heroes to their limit and would leave its mark upon them all forever.

But this reckoning came not from the Evil Horde, nor from any great monster of the Whispering Woods. No, the greatest challenge to their unity and patience would come from two of their own, seeking only to cause chaos to their heart's content.

It all began as another day in Bright Moon, like so many others. The early morning of the home base of the Rebellion was serene in the pre-dawn light. Crisp, clean air wafted over the calm waters and among the magically floating rocks surrounding the majestic settlement, and delicately blew into the castle proper, filling it with the invigorating smell of a sunny coastal dawn.

The people of the town and the castle both woke up ready to face the rigours of the day, always wary of the dangers that might befall them from the near endless might of the Horde beyond the Whispering Woods, but otherwise content that this day would be one like any other.

Sadly, as the dawn finally broke, the peace and tranquillity of that magnificent Bright Moon morning was shattered by the bellow of a ferocious wild animal.

"CAAATRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!"

Or, at least, Princess Glimmer might as well have been a wild animal.

The feisty young princess of Bright Moon had woken up to discover all was not well in her world. Her yell was heard halfway across the entire castle, startling and confusing many guards, courtiers and average people traversing the place.

In her chambers, Queen Angella caught Glimmer's shout, muffled by walls and distance, and with an exasperated scoff, she rolled her eyes and slammed her head back into her pillow, praying to any entity listening that she was actually dreaming and all would be well when she woke up for real.

But it was not to be.

Glimmer was in a precarious situation, one where her magic might not be enough to salvage her from danger. She was a prisoner in her own bedroom, trapped by circumstances far more confining than any mere magic spell or hostage taker.

There was a bang as the doors to her room burst open, and in ran her oldest and truest friend Bow. With flourish, he began skidding across the floor, his namesake weapon in one hand and an arrow in the other, having not checked what he might find inside.

He quickly realised that he couldn't stop skidding, and promptly toppled over on the ice that covered the floor in a thin, almost transparent layer. And that was when he discovered the dozens and dozens of drinking glasses that had been filled with water and turned upside-down on top of the icy floor.

He ended up crashing, cold, soaked and bruised, into the divan under Glimmer's bedroom window. The sound of rolling glass and his weapons skittering across ice soon died down after him. Mercifully, none of the glass had cracked.

"Bow! Bow, are you alright?!" Above him in her raised bed, Glimmer peeked over the edge, hiding her face, concern now joining her frustration.

With a groan, Bow tried to stand up, and immediately slipped again. Trying again, he carefully used the divan as leverage and climbed up onto it. "Yeah… yeah, I'm fine, Glimmer. What is all this? Did Catra do this?"

"Who else but her and Frosta?" Glimmer said with a sigh and disappeared from where Bow could see her. He frowned a deep frown and couldn't help but sigh as well.

He knew that, for the last few weeks, when the Princess Alliance wasn't busy fighting the endless… well, _hordes_ of the Evil Horde, Bright Moon had been subject to a different terror altogether from their mortal enemies. All this because Catra; warrior of the Rebellion and inheritor of the mantle of She-Ra, Princess of Power, and Princess Frosta of the Kingdom of Snows had been working on slowly patching up their rocky relationship.

The trouble was that they had been doing this by pulling pranks on everyone else in the Alliance when and where they could. No one was safe from the dreadful duo, and it was becoming a menace they couldn't stomach.

"I don't know what else to do, Bow!" Glimmer's distressed voice carried throughout the room well enough, despite Bow not seeing her. "I mean, I wanted them to get along with each other after everything, so, woohoo for that! But this… this is not where I wanted things to go."

"With how the pair of them are, I suppose we should've known this was coming." Bow gingerly sat on the divan and checked to see if, by a miracle, he had made a trick arrow that could help defrost the floor as he talked. Occasionally he looked up to see if Glimmer had shown her face yet.

"But Frosta was so formal before!" Glimmer wailed. "I mean, sure, when you're in charge, you've gotta act like it… Urgh, now I sound like Mom. But now… Being with the team's changed her, I think. Made her realise she doesn't have to be so adult about everything."

"But… isn't that good for her?" Bow asked.

"Not when she's doing stuff like this!" Glimmer's voice shouted back.

"Okay, Glimmer, could we have this conversation face-to-face, please?" Bow went on, getting more exasperated.

"Uhhh, could we maybe not?" Glimmer said back, sounding nervous.

Bow could help but cock an eyebrow. He wasn't stupid. What had Catra or Frosta done to her to make her want to hide? "… What did they do to you, Glimmer?"

"I don't want you to see! It's embarrassing enough to know I have this without you seeing it…"

"Glimmer…" He tried, "Whatever has happened to you, you know I'm not gonna do anything but help you fix it. I'm you friend, remember?"

There was a pause as Glimmer contemplated the best course of action; whether it was the nobler course to continue to hide her new disfigurement and face her troubles alone, or to confide in Bow and face the horrors of her predicament with her most trusted friend at her back.

In the end, she knew that she could not face this alone. And if her recent battles and trials had taught her anything, it was that no one in the Princess Alliance or the Rebellion should not face their battles by themselves.

With a sigh, she teleported down to sit next to Bow on the divan, and she revealed her current shame.

Bow did his best to hold back his surprise and urge to snigger, even as his eyes widened.

It seemed that Catra had decided to make Glimmer look a bit more cat-like herself. She'd drawn simply the cutest set of whiskers around the Bright Moon princess's nose and had even gone to the trouble of marking rings around Glimmer's eyes, one blue and one yellow, so that it was clear who did it. On top of this, Glimmer had a tongue drawn below her mouth, sticking out, and in the centre of her forehead was a crudely-drawn snowflake.

Bow wanted to be sympathetic and not give in to treacherous laughter. He really did. But his body decided that his mind shouldn't be in charge for the moment, and so he had to turn his head and feign a cough rather than make Glimmer feel worse than she already did.

"I woke up and found this when I looked in the mirror. That was when I slipped on the ice and got my boots soaked." Glimmer explained, sounding especially pitiful. That was the catalyst for Bow to finally suppress the need to chuckle and turned back to Glimmer, putting a hand on her shoulder.

"We'll get you and this room cleaned up soon enough, and then we can go have a word with the Dynamic Duo about what they're doing."

Glimmer pouted, and Bow couldn't help but think she looked outrageously cute. The temporary tattoos didn't make it any better. "As long as we can get this mess off my face. I don't wanna go out and have people see me like this."

"You can use my room, and I'll have some stuff brought to help you clean it off." Bow offered his hand to Glimmer, suggesting that she teleport them to his room then and there. She smiled, genuinely grateful to him, and took his hand as they started the day overcoming a sour note.

Little did they know it was only going to get weirder from there.

###

Sometime later, Glimmer and Bow had successfully cleaned up the room and then Glimmer herself, with the help of some surprised but understanding servants. Mermista had even been called in to help move the water out without damaging too much in there, which she had done with her usual aloof attitude.

Now all three of them were heading to the War Room together, determined not to let Catra and Frosta's little prank spoil their day. That determination lasted right up to the moment that they heard the sounds of bickering from inside the War Room itself.

"Will you just listen?! That's supposed to be my chair!"

"And I'm telling you, that shape mean's it's mine!"

"They've made them look different, Perfuma, they're trying to mess with us…"

"URGH! Why'd they have to stick all this stuff to them! I swear, when I see those two…"

Glimmer, Bow and Mermista looked to one another, realising that their hopes were dashed. Glimmer frowned. Bow sighed. Mermista rolled her eyes. With no other option, they entered the room.

The War Room was in a state of only minor chaos as they entered, but it was threatening to move on to a more intermediate brand of chaos if things escalated further. The guards that normally lined the walls had moved in and were standing to attention around the table and chairs that dominated the room's centre. Between these stoic figures could be seen Perfuma, Netossa and Spinnerella, all standing around and having an argument. The guards parted as the two trios linked up, and the newcomers got to see the source of that argument.

Someone… there was no real mystery as to who, though… had taken almost every single one of the chairs around the table, wrapped in them various linen sheets held together with belts and strips of cloth, and rearranged them at random around the table. They also seemed to have stuffed the linens full of things to make the shapes of the chairs different. While around half of the chairs were the same anyway, the rest had some unique design to make them stand out and denote who it was meant for. And they were almost always arranged in the same pattern.

Except for now.

Perfuma and Netossa were the main participants in the heated but still relatively civil debate as to chair placement and ownership, while Spinnerella was furtively trying to undo some of the bindings that held all the cloth in place and actually show which chair was which.

Only one chair in the entire set had been exempted from this treatment, much to Glimmer's quiet relief. The chair of her late father, King Micah, sat untouched in its usual spot at the table.

"Whoa, alright everyone, just calm down." Bow did his best to be the voice of reason in a difficult situation. "There's no point arguing until we can get the chairs unwrapped. Let's all help Spinnerella, shall we?"

Perfuma and Netossa weighed up their options, debating internally the value of being a part of the solution over being the victor in establishing the problem, and both came to the conclusion that they valued their working relationships too much to waste them on a petty grievance.

So, the six of them set to work, Glimmer dismissing the guards back to the walls where they normally stood, and after ten minutes they had succeeded in unwrapping the chairs of everything covering them. The chairs underneath all the dross seemed intact, and none of them found any hidden surprises in, on or around them.

"It wouldn't surprise me if Catra hid a whoopie cushion in one of these things." Glimmer said sardonically.

"Don't say that where she can hear you, you'll give her ideas." Netossa sounded especially sour as she finally finished checking her own chair, moving it back where it was supposed to be and sitting down. The rest of the Alliance present soon joined her. Gratefully, there were no arguments about where anyone sat or where chairs were placed.

Before long, Queen Angella herself arrived, looking as regal as always aside from the slight bags under eyes from lack of peaceful sleep. She noted the scrubbed red patches on Glimmer's face, the awkward expressions of the Alliance members, and the piles of linen and leather sat nest to the table, and she sighed.

She went to her seat and took it without a word. She looked again over the assembled group before she finally said anything. "Good morning, everyone. I can see that you've been… kept busy with things. Have either Catra or Frosta been seen yet?"

"Nope," Netossa responded testily, her arms crossed. "And they'd keep away today, if they know what's good for them."

"While I agree that these pranks they are pulling are getting out of hand, they are still part of the Princess Alliance, and they need to be here. We have to be up front and clear that we are not going to tolerate their hijinks much longer." Angella kept herself calm, her tone reasonable but firm.

"I mean, I planned to do that anyway…" Netossa punctuated her statement by cracking her knuckles.

"Netossa, you cannot fight in here; this is the War Room," Angella said sternly, totally oblivious to the contradiction of her words or the meta nature of the quote.

Netossa looked at Angella with a confused stare. "You do realise what you just said, right?"

Next to her, Spinnerella cleared her throat and put a hand on her partner's shoulder. "If we just start fighting them, it will hurt our friendships in more permanent ways." She said, doing her best to sound reasonable.

Netossa said nothing but grumbled and glared at the table with a clear intent to do it some serious damage.

And so, for the time, they began discussing business pertinent to the continued liberation and emancipation of Etheria from the Horde, and how the princesses and their individual kingdoms were managing in the long war they all had a part in.

After five minutes of this, Catra and Frosta sauntered into the War Room, and all eyes turned to them. Everything went deathly silent, and the pair stopped before they reached the table. There was a long moment of silence, as the Princess Alliance stood off against each other. The guards around them took in the moment, many of them privately wondering just how things were going to go.

"Hey, everyone. What's up?" Catra was flippant. The tension cracked like sheet ice.

"Do the two of you have nothing to say except that?" Angella retorted coolly.

Frosta covered her mouth to suppress a giggle. Catra sniffed and said, "Not sure what you mean, Your Majesty."

"Catra…" Angella did her best to keep an even temper. She knew Catra's past. She didn't want to come across as being like the magicat's old tormentor. "We all know that it was you who wrapped up the chairs and swapped them around this morning."

"And messed with me and my room!" Glimmer did not share her mother's reservations and had decided to skip past sounding reasonable and resort to shrill from the get-go. "You and Frosta both! Both me and Bow got soaked! Bow even got hurt!"

"Well, not that badly…" Bow added quietly.

"Don't try and defend them, Bow! They need to fess up and stop being so childish all the time."

"I mean, technically, I am still a child." Frosta said, finally deciding to contribute to the conversation.

"You are also a Princess, and a member of the Princess Alliance and the Rebellion. There are responsibilities and expectations that come with those titles. You would be the first admit this if anyone but yourself pointed out your age." Angella looked at Frosta gravely. Frosta looked about ready to retort, then realised that the queen of Bright Moon had a point, and she wisely kept her mouth shut.

Angella sighed and continued, "The pair of you… We have all here been as understanding as we can with you, considering how much good it has done for you two to find common ground, in light of your… history…"

Catra's ear twitched. Frosta's nose wrinkled for a moment.

"… But you both are taking your fun and games too far. Even if you two were not Princesses of the Alliance, with the reputation to match that you need to uphold, your actions are causing all of us here nothing but grief, and it has to stop."

"Aww, but Your Majesty…" Catra's voice became especially silky and sweet as she playfully pleaded her case. "There's no point having all that responsibility if you can't have some fun to balance it out."

"Not when it is hurting those around you." Angella retorted bluntly.

"Pfft… Will you lighten up, Queenie? I mean, come on, it's not that bad." Catra said dismissively.

There was a change in the air, like a chill or a deepening of the shadows, and a tiny gasp could be heard from at the table, though no one was paying enough attention to see who it was. Angella's face flushed an angry, ugly red as her eyes narrowed. She inhaled deep.

"I would not tolerate such a glib tone from Glimmer, and I certainly will not tolerate it from you. Either of you." Angella's voice remained steady, but there was a sharp edge to it.

There was a moment of brief, frightening electricity in the glare that Catra and Angella shared. Glimmer had a moment of personal outrage at having her antics compared to Catra, but this flicker was lost in the storm between her mother and her friend. Everyone else around the table became worried where this would escalate to.

But, in the end, it was Frosta who helped cool down the situation, thus setting a precedent for social stereotyping that would follow her reputation for at least the remainder of our tale. She gently tugged on Catra's arm and, when Catra finally turned her attention to her, put on her best sparkly puppy-dog eyes.

"Hey, Catra? Maybe we should just, y'know, say we're sorry this time?" Frosta was grateful for the etiquette and political training she had, even at her young age, so that she could add just the barest hint of quaver to her voice that would make everyone else's hearts melt.

"Well geez, Frosta, why don't we just go down on hands and knees?" Catra retorted, but everyone else could see she was half-hearted about it. Frosta seemed to be getting through to her. And when the Princess of Snows said nothing and just kept staring at her, she sighed theatrically and cleared her throat.

"Alright… Your Majesty, everyone, I'm sorry. _We're_ sorry." Catra folded her arms and had the decency to look sheepish. "The things we've done today… Well, we'll try and do better from now on. Won't we, brat?"

Frosta made a show of bristling at the last comment, directed at her, and she smirked. "Absolutely, pet. We'll do better."

The tension left the room like water drained from a leaky barrel, and the Princess Alliance collectively breathed a sigh of relief and decided to get on with the rest of the day. Glimmer, knowing the pair the best, did feel a little suspicious of their honesty, but decided maybe a bit of trust would go a long way. The rest of the Alliance were otherwise confident that, from this point on, Catra and Frosta would at least tone down the scale of the pranks they would inflict on them for their own amusement.

They were certain of this. It was all going to be fine. Absolutely.

That certainty lasted right up until a week later, its death heralded by a braying of a mad horse, and the splintering of wood.

###

The grooms who attended to Bright Moon stables did not always have it easy, certainly not these days. The care and nurturing of the horses kept by either the royal family or by the various citizens took great skill, dedication and patience under normal circumstances, but few of them would say that they did not enjoy the job they had.

The arrival of the magical horse Swift Wind, steed to the legendary She-Ra had certainly shaken up their usual dynamic. Having a horse that could actively criticise one's coat-brushing technique with words rather than simply kick out made things both more surreal and more practical. Having a horse fill them in on the finer points of social anarchism and the emancipation of horse-kind across Etheria skewed more towards exasperating.

But today, things were especially crazy as the morning sun filled their extensive stable courtyard. The grooms had brought Swift Wind his usual breakfast of a barrel of apples, receiving not a word of thanks in return for this, but instead a pithy comment on how their daily briberies would not sway him to submit to the system that enslaved all good horses everywhere, before tucking into the fruit with a happy giggle.

Less than ten seconds later, and Swift Wind was yowling and neighing and bucking at everything around him like a horse possessed. The apple barrel exploded into splinters, and apples and apple chunks flew about the yard as the grooms tried to contain Swift Wind's movement. Other barrels and nearby wooden walls splintered and cracked. Swift Wind's agility and ability to fly short distances meant that he skipped around the yard in his mad fits, and soon everything in reach of his hind legs was a mess.

His distressed calls and the breaking of so much of the surrounding stables soon attracted the attention of guards and, at their head, a worried Princess Glimmer. She quickly teleported into the situation and, after narrowly avoiding getting bowled over by the majestic winged unicorn, decided to land herself straight on his back and attempt to ride him until she could calm him.

"Whoa, Swifty! Easy, boy, easy!" Glimmer's frantic attempts to appeal to him were only half successful, as Swift Wind stopped hopping around, but kept bucking and whining in place. In the end, she threw her arms around Swift Wind's neck and held his head tight, as much to stay on his back as to soothe him. She sheepishly tried rubbing his coat gently in an affectionate gesture.

It only then dawned on her just how ridiculous she must look to everyone around her, wrangling a mad horse and doing so with all the grace of a hyperactive child in a play pen. She would later ruminate on the indignity she had suffered and console herself with as many sweet treats as she could sneak away from the kitchens.

Right now, she remained focused on Swift Wind, who was slowly beginning to come down from his mad bout. "Come on, Swift Wind! Easy there. What happened to you?"

After another few seconds of nickering and stomping, Swift Wind had calmed enough to say something.

"Brain freeze! BRAIN FREEZE! Oooooh, that's really uncomfortable!" A combination of exhaustion, distress and panic meant Swift Wind's voice had risen by an octave as he complained.

"What happened, Swift? How you'd get brain freeze?" Glimmer looked at the horse, then to the grooms still surrounding the pair in mute shock. "What did you give him?" She demanded of them.

The one amongst the grooms with the most initiative stepped forward to answer. "J-just his normal apple breakfast, Your Highness." He waved in the direction of the smashed barrel and the scattered apples on the ground. One or two of them looked half-chewed, where Swift Wind hadn't managed to finish them before his episode.

Even from here, Glimmer thought she could see something wrong with them. She teleported off the horse, feeling a twinge of tiredness from three quick uses of her power so early in the morning, and examined the damaged apples.

Picking one up, she immediately felt a biting, frosty cold in her fingers, and she almost dropped it again. The skin was covered in frost and blobs of ice, and the inside was hard and bitter to the touch. It had been completely frozen through.

She dropped the broken apple and checked a complete one nearby. The same story. She checked another, and another. All the same. Every single apple in the barrel had been flash-frozen before the whole package had been put in front of Swift Wind to gorge himself on.

Glimmer sighed and hunched over. A tiny, tiny whimper escaped her as she tried not to let her annoyance show. She was about ready to let Catra and Frosta know just what she thought of this stupidity.

"Be brave…" she whispered to herself.

She stood up and turned in time to see Swift Wind had found a barrel of water and had taken to alternatively gulping the tepid liquid down or washing his mouth out with it. Within seconds, he had calmed down completely, and the grooms and guards breathed a collective sigh of relief.

"Oh, that's better." The winged horse went back to normal with surprising ease. "Now, which of you gentlemen thought I should get the frozen apples this morning?"

"It's not their fault." Glimmer seized the conversation before any of the grooms tried to stammer their way through a denial of blame. "This one's on Catra and Frosta. They're still at their little prank crusade against all of Bright Moon."

Swift Wind blinked as he processed this. "Y'know, I should really have seen the connection. Frosta, frozen apples… makes sense."

Glimmer could only stare at Swift Wind, not even dignifying him with words.

"But…" the horse went on, beginning to sound hurt and misused, "but why would Catra do this to me? I thought we were becoming so much closer!"

"What can I say, Swifty, those two bring out the worst in each other." Glimmer sighed again, said her farewells to Swift Wind and took off stomping back into the castle, already dreading what more unpleasantness was due to come.

###

Bow was panicking as he scrambled around his room, searching and searching and then searching again, for good measure.

None of his tools and gadgets were where they should be. Even his tracker pad had vanished. He had made sure everything was stored away safely last night before he went to bed, and when he'd woken up, it was all gone.

He already suspected Catra and Frosta. It was all too obvious that they would be behind it. But then, his fears of being a bad friend for judging them so quickly reared its head, and he mentally backpedalled with questions. What if someone had merely done it -because- Catra and Frosta were pranking everyone? What if it was all just an unfortunate coincidence? What if Adora, determined in her insane need to ruin Catra's life for her past selfishness, had infiltrated Bright Moon and done all this herself to make him think less of his dear, dear friends to drive a wedge between them and make the Rebellion slowly fall apart and leave all of Etheria ripe for the picking by the Horde?!

…

On reflection, he felt that the last one was pushing it a bit.

And it still didn't answer where everything of his was. He had been through every one of his drawers and cupboards three times already, and discreetly… At least, he hoped it had been discreetly… searched elsewhere in the castle, asking staff and guards if they'd seen anything. No one had. No one had even seen the pair of pranksters responsible for this near the doors to his room.

He was about ready to tear his hair out fretting about this. He couldn't help but be disappointed in them both as friends. Pranks were all well and good some of the time. But everything they were doing was getting out of hand. If he had the same demeanour, he might be in a mood to prank them back somehow, see how they liked it.

But as it was, he was content just to try and weather the storm. And find his gear.

In the end, he gave up hoping that they were still in his room. He just didn't know where the terrible twosome could have moved them. The castle was large enough that it could be anywhere.

And to top it all off, now his room seemed to have sprung a leak, judging by the water slowly dripping onto the floor.

Wait… dripping from where?

And it was at that precise moment that fate decided to intervene and drop the solution to his dilemmas on his head. Literally.

He felt the sharp, deep pain of something solid hitting his head, and he fell to the ground, his entire skull apparently aching and his vision swimming.

With a groan of pain, and running the sore spot on his head, he let his vision slowly stopped blurring, and he could see what his was that had almost concussed him. It was one of his missing tools.

He blinked. Maybe he had been concussed after all. He shook his head and looked again. It was _still_ one of his missing tools.

He reached out shakily and picked it up. He felt the weight and texture of the thing, triply confirming its existence. He frowned, wondering how it had managed to hit him on the head…

A certain realisation dawned.

Bow looked up at the ceiling of his room. All across it, around the decorations and lights, fastened in place by a combination of slowly melting ice and some kind of sticky sap, were all his various implements of tinkering and invention.

"Oh, come on!" He threw his arms out as he yelled at the ceiling, letting the tool in his hand fly off and hit the wall with a raucous clang.

How on Etheria had they managed to pull this off while he was sleeping? He was shocked and appalled by the audacity of his friends. Although, if he was honest with himself, he could certainly appreciate the care that went into pulling off the trick.

And the worse part of it was, as far as Bow was concerned, they hadn't even been stuck up there in any order. They were all just thrown about up there without any consideration for good filing! It was just disgraceful!

Catra and Frosta were in for it now! It was time for him to get tough and make his thoughts known to them!

…

Right after he'd gotten everything down and cleaned it. Even if that did take all day…

###

With consummate grace and skill, he sneaked his way towards the chosen rendezvous. His heart's purpose gave him strength to do this thing for his love. At last, his long efforts would be rewarded.

Sea Hawk, sea captain and adventurer extraordinaire, was carefully making his way through Bright Moon castle. The morning was still young, and the sun barely risen, but as it was, he felt full of vigour and drive. This morning, it seemed he had finally made a breakthrough to the inestimably lovely and beautiful Princess Mermista, long the object of his affections.

He had only arrived by the sea routes to Bright Moon yesterday afternoon, but soon enough after, he had met with the ever-impish Catra, who had come to him at the dock with a letter intended for him.

Catra had seemed more pleasant and keen to engage with him than normal. Considering her own trials and tribulations in living up to the mantle of She-Ra, and foremost champion of the Rebellion, coupled with her history and temperament, Sea Hawk had been surprised, pleasantly so, by her willingness to be cordial with him.

The letter she had given him had been an even greater and more pleasant surprise on top.

Princess Mermista had personally requested the pleasure of his company while they were both staying at Bright Moon. He was to join her in the bedroom towards the top of the castle, he was to come unseen by anyone else, and he was to dress in the clothing she requested of him, as she would greatly like the suggested ensemble on him.

She hadn't written it quite like that, of course. It had been more like: _Hey, Sea Hawk, so, y'know, you're persistent and all that, but I, like, kinda like that, so, why don't you totally come to the room at the top of Bright Moon tomorrow morning, and, like, wear these things I really want you to wear 'cause, see, I think you'd look super dashing in them. Just, y'know, think about it. I'll be waiting for you._

Her brusque, aloof manner might lead others to think poorly of her, but the core message of her words came across to him clearly enough.

So now, he was letting excitement and the vigour of love fuel his careful movements through the castle, dressed as requested.

He would not have thought dear Mermista to be the sort of lass who appreciated a man dressed in long yellow stockings, with garters cross-wrapped over them, even if it was the case that the more he wore the vibrant leggings, the more comfortable and enjoyable he found them. On top of that, the hat with plumes every which-way felt a little too much, even by his standards. But who was he to deny the requests of she whom he most admired?

Soon enough, Sea Hawk was outside the room at the top of Bright Moon castle. He took a deep, invigorating breath. This was his moment. He would pull this off with aplomb!

With great care, he opened the doors.

Inside the room was a beautifully furnished bedroom. The décor fitted Bright Moon perfectly, and it clearly suited a princess. The pleasant scent of perfumes and shampoo filled the air, with… yes, he caught it… just a hint of sea spray.

And there, moving ever so slightly behind a gilt screen, was the silhouette of a female figure. He could pick up the tiny noises of clothes being adjusted, and makeup being applied.

Sea Hawk grinned, excitement and passion fuelling him. He crept closer. The silhouette appeared to be brushing its hair delicately. Sea Hawk could already picture sweeping past the screen, announcing himself in his full regalia, and there would be Mermista, waiting for him, pleased with his devotion to her and her requests of him. He couldn't help but grin as his eyes sparkled with happiness.

Sea Hawk straightened out his hat, tiptoed up to the edge of the screen and, curling his moustache just one more time, sprang past it and into full view of the one waiting behind it, adopting his most heroic and enticing pose.

"Oh, my dearest one! Your gallant Sea Hawk has arrived to shower you with affection!"

Silence hung in the air.

Queen Angella stared at the posing Sea Hawk with eyes wide as saucers, her mouth agape. She still wore a dressing gown; her royal attire was laid out nearby. The pearls she normally adorned on her ears and forehead fell from her hand to the ground with a tinkle.

Both sea captain and queen contemplated the situation, still in silence.

Then they both screamed.

###

"I HAVE NEVER BEEN MORE DISAPPOINTED IN YOU THAN RIGHT NOW! BOTH OF YOU!"

Angella's furious, regal voice resounded around the walls of the war room with such force that everyone around the table either flinched, winced or both. Even Catra herself, for all the bluster she seemed to put on, rolled her eyes in such a way that anyone perceptive could tell she was trying to avoid eye contact with the queen. Frosta did manage to meet Angella's gaze, but mostly because she seemed to be rooted to the spot by the queen's sheer anger.

"Not content to break your word to us from last week about not pulling more pranks," Angella continued, "you've seen fit to escalate the matter and drag even more people into your little game, myself included! Again!"

"Okay, first of all, Frosta and I never agreed that we'd stop, Your Majesty," Catra retorted in a mockingly reproachful voice. "We said that we'd do better. And considering we did more and bigger pranks this time, I'd say we lived up to expectations."

"IS THAT SUPPOSED TO MAKE IT ANY BETTER?!" Angella's face was completely crimson with indignation. "You and Frosta are acting without even a hint of shame, and you're damaging not only your reputations, but that of the Alliance and the Rebellion as well!"

"Look, is this just 'cause we pranked you, specifically? Honestly, I thought you'd get a laugh out of Sea Hawk dressed in those stupid clothes."

There was a snorting sound from the direction of Mermista, who had the common sense to cover her mouth and at least pretend to be embarrassed. Angella scoffed.

"The poor captain's deception is no laughing matter. Nor was the luring away of the guards assigned to my chambers, the forging of Mermista's handwriting, and sneaking her favourite perfume amongst my own for me to use. And for that matter, the things you did to Bow and Swift Wind today are unacceptable, by themselves! I really do not much care anymore if you and Frosta find these games amusing and means to bond. They are going to stop."

"What, you want things to go back to how they were before between us?" Catra said, glaring back at Angella.

"Don't play childish with me, Catra! There is a middle ground between fighting each other and working to make us all miserable. If you cannot find that and work together without bringing out this madness in each other, then we will take action."

"What is with you people?" Catra sounded genuinely put out by now. "Seriously, we're here fighting for everyone's right to do stuff they love like this, stuff that makes them happy, but when me and Frosta do it, suddenly we're not allowed? How are we any better than the Horde if we can't practice what we preach?"

The red in Angella's face shifted to a more ashen hue. "I would think you more responsible than to compare us to the Horde like that. We fight for freedom, for the planet, and for its people. But there has to be responsibility, and you are failing to see that."

The winged queen folded her arms sternly. "And if you want to make comparisons, think on this; Though I will never stoop to the cruelty of your former tormentor, Catra, do not think I will be lenient if you continue to push me."

The implications hung in the air with a hefty weight. Catra's face pinched in a flash of rage at the thought of Shadow Weaver, but she supressed it just as fast. Shadow Weaver no longer had that kind of power over her. And no matter what Angella might say, Catra wasn't convinced of her threat. For now, though, she stayed silent, and allowed herself to fall back into her own chair, folding one leg over the other and putting her hands behind her back.

"And now, perhaps we can conduct this meeting while composing ourselves with a little more dignity." Angella hissed as she also lowered herself into her throne

There a massive explosion of flatulent noise as she sat down. Her eyes went wide, then narrowed as her lips pursed in anger.

All around the room, the rest of the Princess Alliance reacted in different ways. Netossa grit her teeth and closed her eyes. Perfuma and Spinnerella both covered their mouth in shock. Glimmer and Bow both looked like they desperately wanted to be anywhere else in Etheria, right now. Mermista facepalmed and sighed. Swift Wind's face puffed up as he held back a guffaw. Frosta seemed to have tuned the world out, staring ahead at nothing, as she had realised where this all might be going very shortly. Catra remained sitting as she had been, but now looking exceptionally pleased with herself.

Angella did not say a word as she stood back up, reached down to her chair, and extracted from it the whoopie cushion that had been hidden there. She held it up and stared accusingly at Catra.

Without missing a beat, Catra lazily turned her head towards Glimmer, smirking all the while. "Thanks again for the suggestion, Glimmer. Took me a while to find one of those, but it was sure worth it."

"Wha-?!" Glimmer blushed furiously at the accusation. "I didn't suggest this! When did I ever-? Wait…" Her face underwent a rapid series of emotions almost at once, going from confusion, to understanding, to horror, before settling on embarrasment.

She stared at Catra wide-eyed. "You were there, the first time you messed with the chairs! You heard me-"

"And I couldn't be more grateful you spoke up, Glim." Catra's smirk had transitioned from merely indulgent to borderline psychotic. "If you've got any more ideas for pranks, I'll hear 'em. I've got plenty I wanna do 'round here yet."

There was a loud thud as Angella slapped her hands down on the table.

"That's IT!" Angella spread her wings wide, and the gust of wind they generated made everyone stagger and give her their undivided attention. "Catra, I have tolerated yours and Frosta's hijinks long enough, and I have had enough of all of it! I'm putting you both in a time-out!"

A moment of silence went through the war room, and everyone seemed suddenly tense and nervous.

Everyone except Catra, who failed to suppress sudden laughter.

"Pffft… Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Oh my gosh, are you serious?!" She clutched her sides and shook as she laughed, failing to notice that nobody else, not even Frosta, was joining in. "That's the funniest thing I've ever heard!"

Near to her, Glimmer gulped silently in alarm and unconsciously moved away from Catra. Everyone else followed suit, except for Angella, who seemed to loom over the magicat ever higher.

"C-Catra," Glimmer said, "I don't think you understand what my mom means by a time-out."

"Oh, please!" Catra waved a dismissive hand in Glimmer's direction, not seeing as the two guards stationed at the entrance arch began to approach her from behind. "What's she gonna do? Ground me too while she's at it?! Ha ha ha ha ha-!"

Her laughter was cut off as a strong hand gripped her shoulder. Finally, Catra's eyes opened to see Queen Angella properly, now approaching her with a glare that could melt a Horde tank at a hundred paces. She saw the other guard stand behind Frosta, with an expression that told the young princess that she was going with Catra, and no, this was not up for debate.

The best Catra could manage before she was firmly escorted away was a slightly panicked chuckle.

###

A few minutes later, and there was a sharp, ethereal sound as the magic barrier surrounding her and Frosta rose and trapped them in the middle of the prison cell.

Well, if one could even call it a prison cell. Honestly, if Catra had cared to comment on it, she would have made it clear that if the Horde had ever had cells like this, they could have opened a hotel in the Fright Zone and charged cash money for the privilege of getting imprisoned. Even if Angella had made a point of ordering the cushions… _most_ of the cushions… removed from the room, there was no hiding that this place was not meant to be used for locking anyone up.

But Catra wasn't really concerned about small, niggling details like the state of the décor. She was far too busy banging her fists on the barrier, despite the electrical shocks it gave off, and yelling wide-eyed at the still glaring Glimmer, who stood just in front of her, arms folded across her chest and doing her best to look cold.

"WHAT KIND OF PSYCHO LOCKS ANYONE IN A CELL AND CALLS IT A TIME-OUT?!" Catra screeched at the top of her lungs.

Glimmer couldn't help but scoff and mutter darkly, "You don't know what Mom's capable of."

That was when Glimmer, oblivious to everything except what was in front of her, felt a gentle tap on her shoulder. Before she could even turn around, she tensed up, her expression becoming one of dread. She heard the sound of her mother's voice whispering right next to her ear, so softly that it made Glimmer's spine tingle to hear it.

"I heard that."

Glimmer made a sound that Catra had only ever heard before when she'd caught a particularly easily startled mouse, and she promptly vanished in a puff of pink sparkles, leaving only Catra, Frosta, and Angella in the room together.

"Now, I want you two to think about what you've done." Angella said clearly, straightening her back and putting on her best scolding mother voice. "I'll have you released in twenty minutes."

With that, Angella turned on her heel and began to walk out of the room.

"Oh, come on!" Catra whined. Angella was unmoved, even as moved out of the room and her guards closed the door behind her, leaving Catra and Frosta alone to their magically enforced time-out.

Defeated, Catra banged her forehead against the barrier, still ignoring the slight pain it caused. The energy of the barrier caused a static effect in Catra's hair, making it puff up and out up into a chaotic, patchy afro of feline fluff.

There was a brief, awkward silence for the pair as they just stood there, trapped together with each other.

It ended when Frosta cleared her throat in an attempt to break the ice. "Well," she said, "look on the bright side! At least you have some company in here."

Catra pulled away from the barrier to glare at Frosta. Her hair stayed frizzy and standing on end, making her look like just the cutest little angry floof. Frosta tried to suppress a snigger. Frosta _failed_ to suppress a snigger. In two seconds flat, she was sat on the floor and laughing.

Catra groaned and sat down cross-legged on the floor, putting her head in her hands and shutting her eyes. "Why couldn't she just execute me..."

"What, you're letting yourself be defeated, pet?" Frosta snarked at her. Catra snapped her head up to see her fellow prankster's smirk. She was being baited, she knew, but right now, she was just fine with it, and she grinned a predatory grin back.

"Hah! What d'you think, brat?" She moved her hands to hold them behind her head and look in control of things. "I've got one more real good job to pull 'round here. And it seems the queen was nice enough to give us a space to talk about it…"

###

Eventually, the madness came to a head, and the Princess Alliance reached a breaking point. On that fateful day, a decision had to made that would decide if the Alliance could recover and fight on, stronger than ever, or be destroyed. Over several more days, pranks had been pulled off that were the stuff of legend, or the stuff of nightmares, depending on who you asked. And here, on this day, the reckoning came.

This moment of truth was heralded by yet another loud yell from Glimmer. By now, these had become so consistent in their weekly occurrences that workers and guards could use it to know the new week had begun in earnest.

This one seemed to be a doozy, though. Glimmer couldn't even articulate a name; such was her anger. All that anyone heard was a shrill, apocalyptically incensed series of screams.

Queen Angella missed this, mercifully, as she had finally resorted to a pair of earplugs, graciously enchanted by Castaspella for her use. For the first morning in weeks, the Queen of Bright Moon slept on, content that everything with her daughter would sort itself out.

As it was, Glimmer was busy stomping around in her own bedroom, vocalising a cacophony of incoherent angry noises like the chittering of a distressed chinchilla. She was beside herself! She could not encompass the outrage she felt, all because of her supposed friend's treacherous actions. It would not stand! She had a duty as a Princess and a member of the Rebellion to stand up to any indignity!

She would have justice for what had been done, just as soon as…

As if on cue, Bow once again entered her chambers. He came in cautiously, weapon ready, but made sure his footing was secure as he entered.

"Glimmer! What's going on, are you alright?" He sounded genuinely concerned for her, but at that precise moment, Glimmer did not have the wherewithal to appreciate this.

"URGH! It's fine, Bow, I'm not in danger." She said, taking a breath to try and calm down.

"Oh… Well, that's good!" Bow replied, lowering his weapon and storing his arrow. "I mean, I think me and about half of Bright Moon heard that. What's Catra done-"

With a flash of violet sparkles, Glimmer was stood next to Bow, pressing her finger to his lips. "Shush-shush-shush! We do not speak the traitor's name in this place, Bow…"

Glimmer spoke low and conspiratorially to him and Bow just looked around awkwardly. "Uh, okay? What has she done now, Glimmer?"

"Only betrayed my trust in the most personal way possible!" Glimmer said, full of righteous pomp and indignation. She marched around the room as she preached, gesturing firmly all around. "She took advantage of our friendship, all the bonds we've made as we fought and suffered together. And all to sneak her way into my room and steal the Rebellion's most crucial documents for her own selfish ends. What she has taken could be the ruin of the Princess Alliance, the end of my career as a commander of the Rebellion and reduce the last best hopes for Etheria to a laughingstock if its contents were to become known to anyone but myself!"

Bow's expression deadpanned, and he cocked his head slightly as realisation dawned.

"You mean she stole your diary."

Glimmer's face puffed up like it had been stung by a particularly vindictive wasp. "BOW! Don't make it sound so simple! What I've written in there is for my eyes only! And besides, that's not all she's done."

"No?" Bow was starting to get a little worried about how far Catra and Frosta's latest prank had gone. It seemed they had had done something to push poor, beleaguered Glimmer over the edge.

"Ohhhh-ho-ho-ho-ho-ho, _no_!" Glimmer went on, her eye twitching and her bed head growing ever more frazzled as she worked herself up. "She _had_ to go above and beyond! Look what she left in place of my diary!"

Glimmer stormed over to her writing desk while Bow tentatively followed her. She snatched up a book from her desk and brandished it in his face for him to see. He frowned, confused at first. The book looked identical to Glimmer's diary, from the one time that Bow had caught a glimpse of something as private as that book. It was an unassuming thing, but it was bound in pink leather.

Carefully, Bow reached up and took the book out of Glimmer's hand and, dreading what he was about to see, opened it to the first page.

It was a crudely drawn cartoon of what he was pretty sure were himself and Glimmer, smiling and smooching on a green hilltop, the sunset behind them replaced by a giant red love heart with rays of light coming off it. A tiny figure in the corner that was clearly Catra was sticking her tongue out at them with a smirk.

Bow blushed, his eyes wide. He looked up at Glimmer, who had started blushing herself out of embarrassment, but otherwise still looked ready to introduce Catra to a therapeutic bout of aggressive fist-to-face sparkles.

Looking back at the dummy diary, Bow flicked through more and more pages. Every single one, without fail, had another drawing of Glimmer and either himself or someone else surrounded by love hearts, stars and other saccharine imagery.

Glimmer and himself dancing, Glimmer and Perfuma gardening, Glimmer and Frosta in a moment of fighting action… that one looked like Frosta herself had drawn it… Glimmer and Bow again, at a candlelit dinner, Glimmer and Sea Hawk on a boat, Glimmer and Mermista swimming, Glimmer and Sea Hawk and Mermista swimming _near_ a boat, Glimmer snuggling her diary… that one was weird to behold.

Finally, he decided he had seen enough and closed the book with a polite cough.

"O-oooh boy…" Was all he could manage to say.

"This is too much, Bow! Catra had no right to… What she's drawn… How did she even know where my diary was?! I mean, I know it went missing a while back and then magically came back one day… That was her as well, I'll bet, now that I think about it." Glimmer grasped her head in both hands in frustration, mussing up her hair even more. "URGH! And I just _know_ that Frosta's in on this, too! I know her art when I see it! When I find them both, I gonna… just…" Bow couldn't make out the rest as she descended into incoherent grumbling and turned away from him.

"Eh-heh-heh, yeah!" Bow replied, unenthusiastically. He "I'm sure they'll be in real trouble. Frosta won't be smiling once you've-" he realised his mistake even as he said it: He'd suggested too much.

The speed at which Glimmer head snapped around to face him was unsettling, only slightly less so than the way her eyes bored into him. "Smiling?" She said, quietly. A forced grin wriggled and squirmed its way onto Glimmer's pinched up face. "So… You've seen Frosta this morning, Bow?" The sweetness in her voice made a shiver crawl up Bow's spine.

"Uhhhh…" Bow found himself at a loss for words, slowly backing away from Glimmer's unsettling expression. "I-I mean, I thought that maybe I saw her as I was making my way over here to help you, but you know, hah-hah! I was in a rush, maybe I didn't see anything! Who knows what I might have run by-?"

His rambling ended as Glimmer teleported in front of him, leapt up, grabbed hold of his crop top in a death grip, and hung off the front of him looking in square in the eye. Bow tried not to overbalance, forced to stare into his possibly insane friend's bloodshot eyes, as she still grinned that same horrible grin at him. He could hear her breathing so much easier this close, and it sounded like she was holding something back inside of herself.

Glimmer's eye twitched again, and she growled only a single word: "_Where_?"

"Isawherheadingtothespareroom!" Bow blurted out in panicked defeat. As quickly as she'd latched into him, Glimmer let go of him and stood back on her own two feet. Her posture and her smile became more relaxed. Bow did not feel reassured.

"Thanks, Bow!" She said, suddenly chipper again. "It's nice to have a friend I can really rely on."

With that, she teleported again, this time leaving the room. Bow finally remembered to breathe out, and he let his posture slump. He wasn't ready for this first thing in the morning. He made his way out of the room and headed back to his, hoping a bit more rest would help. Just when was all this going to end?

###

Slightly earlier that morning, in another part of the castle entirely, the soon-to-be source of Glimmer's frustration were having a very good time of things.

"Oh, you need to see this!" Catra was currently smirking her face off in Bright Moon castle's spare room with her current partner in crime. After all, who would suspect that they would return to the scene of their shared time-out? Surely, the trauma of their incarceration would instil in them dread and trepidation this room, right?

Wrong. Catra supposed that, at some point, she should thank Angella for making this room known to her. It was the perfect little hidey-hole.

Overall, her morning had been quite enjoyable. She'd woken up before the sun had begun to show it's light through her window, did her ablutions as quickly as possible and sneaked away from her room before the rest of the castle woke up, stolen some breakfast from the kitchens… but not before leaving a note and a freshly-caught fish as a kinda-sorta-maybe-ish apology… and gone to visit Frosta in her temporary accommodations.

She seemed to have given the child princess a bit of a scare upon appearing in her room so suddenly, but Catra passed it off as the girl wanting a few moment's more privacy. Otherwise, Frosta seemed happy to see her, and they'd soon set out some plans for what they could do for upcoming training and, of course, prank ideas.

Catra was honestly surprised at Frosta's capacity for fun and games once she had gotten past Frosta's ruling persona. And her bratty characteristics.

And as far as Catra was concerned, all of this had been a golden opportunity to build on an existing breakthrough she had made with her relationship with Frosta. When they'd first met, they'd rubbed each other the wrong way almost instantly, and it had only gone downhill from there. Very far downhill. They'd hit their fracture point some weeks ago in a crucial mission to defend themselves from the Horde's latest robot menace; a super-adapting model with First Ones' tech integrated.

She and Frosta had fallen out massively during that fight, and Catra had been made to make up with the Princess of Snows by her other friends. But she did, and she had confessed some personal fears and issues, and established a bond with Frosta over the things they had in common. It wasn't perfect, but they were working on it. And they found that working together in their ongoing prank crusade to bring some much-needed fun to Bright Moon and maybe get the rest of the Alliance to lighten up a little was doing wonders for them as bonding sessions.

Currently, she had Glimmer's diary in one hand, and both her and Frosta were sat on the pile of cushions that had were normally stored there. "She made this 'Friendship Meter' for when she first met me and got to know me."

"Really? That's really sweet." Frosta was sat close enough that she could try and glimpse past Catra and look into the diary itself. She felt excited about getting a chance to learn a bit more about Glimmer. Even with her… other commitments and sense of responsibility, Frosta still thought Glimmer was actually kind of fun to be around. Sure, she had a wild side, and then Frosta had been given a chance to let hers show though too, so she didn't complain.

"Sweet? Yeah, I guess." Catra chuckled. "It's a little sappy, really."

Frosta scoffed. "Well, yeah. Princesses gotta have our little secrets, y'know?"

Catra chuckled. It was a good distraction from letting her mind wander to how Glimmer's sappy diary entries had actually been the catalyst to stand up and treat Glimmer as a real friend; as someone worth braving the Fright Zone and all the miserable things that awaited her in it to rescue her.

Instead of ruminating, then, she flicked her way through the pages of Glimmer's diary to the most recent entries, adjusted her seating so Frosta could read with her sat next to her, and read though Glimmer's bared thoughts.

_Dear Diary_

_I've… I'm really upset._

Well, wasn't that just a fine kick in the teeth to start with?

Catra's smirk drained off of her face like water from a bathtub until it became a frown, and she kept reading.

_Catra and Frosta still haven't stopped their pranks. In fact, they're getting worse, and there are always more of them. I'm going to bed and waking up afraid of what stunt they'll pull next, and I don't know how to get them to stop._

_It was a bit of fun at first, I suppose. But I'm sure now that they took our telling them off as a challenge. All the rest of the Princess Alliance feel the same way. We want the pair of them to see that we don't find what they're doing funny. That it's making us sad, or angry, or just plain disappointed in them. I feel disappointed in them._

_I need to say this here, if nowhere else. I need to try and get my thoughts straight. I like Catra and Frosta both. They're friends. And even if they're a pain at times, they're still good people. But they've spent the last few weeks causing havoc, and not taking responsibility for how they're upsetting us… How they're upsetting me._

_And don't get me started on how Mom's taking all this. You know how I feel about Mom these days, Diary, but she's this close to doing something drastic with Catra and Frosta both, and I don't know if I can convince her to let me deal with this, and I'm scared for them._

_Maybe I should actually sit down with them both and try to talk about this, Princess to Princesses. I know they want us to have fun with them; to share in the jokes they're pulling. But it's gotten too much now, and I need to make them see that, somehow._

_I hope I can get through to them soon._

The text ended there, but there was something afterwards that made Catra's heart break just a little. Like many of her previous diary entries, Glimmer had included a Friendship Meter. The last time Catra had seen one for her, it had been filled all the way. On this page, there were two of them, one with little cat ears on the sides, one adorned by a snowflake.

And both meters were now only filled in about ninety percent of the way.

Slowly, with a sudden sadness, Catra closed the book and put in on her lap, staring at it. At first, there was a storm of feelings and thoughts to contend with in her brain, all crammed together and scrabbling to get her attention the most. Worry, sadness, dismissal and anger all fought an epic free-for-all with no quarter given, and whoever won, Catra felt like the loser.

"Hey, what's the matter?" Frosta asked, sounding confused.

As if she had flipped a switch inside herself, Catra sat up straight and put on what she hoped was a casual grin.

"Oh, nothing. Nothing to worry about, squirt. Let's see what other things she's written in in here."

Catra wondered if she could distract Frosta by showing her a different page, and began leafing to somewhere else in the book. Frosta, being both a precocious child and the sovereign ruler of a nation, was not so easily distracted by her ally's clumsy sleight of hand and put a mitt over the book to hold it closed. She looked at Catra with wide, pleading eyes, using a secret technique of subtle psychic manipulation known to all children and small fluffy animals, but only able to be used successfully by a few.

Catra squirmed under Frosta's glare. _No fair…_ she thought to herself. She tried looking away, but found it just made her feel worse. She felt trapped, and that feeling roused an old, familiar anger in her. She immediately quashed it. She'd been down that road enough times. Frosta didn't deserve another trip that way with her over this. She let her smile drop, and she took a deep breath to help her focus.

"I… I didn't know that's how Glimmer felt about all this." Catra said, quietly. "I mean, sure, they've all been angry at first, but I thought… I thought we could win them over and help them have some fun. But if Glimmer feels I'm letting her down like this…"

"It bothers you that much?" Catra picked up the dismissive tone in Frosta's voice, and she turned to look at her, her eyes hardening.

"I just wanted to do something I could laugh about. These pranks were meant to be fun. I wanted to try and get people to lighten up a little. They could all use a reminder that we don't have to always worry ourselves sick about the war. We all deserve to have some fun too!"

Frosta waved her hand in agreement. "Of course! We can't be grown up all the time. But we _are_ having fun, aren't we? Maybe we just need to find something that can make them have some fun."

Catra didn't speak, but sighed very quietly, seeming to get a little smaller as she hunched over.

Frosta tilted her head, not fully understanding the reaction. Catra only went silent like this if she was lost in thought about something, she wanted to keep to herself. Or if she was preening, but that was obviously not the case right now.

"Something else on your mind?" She tried, diplomatically.

"Wha- Nooo! No, I'm fine! Nothing more on _my_ mind! I mean, 's there something on _your_ mind?" Catra tried to smile and look chipper again as she spoke, on the desperate notion that just because pretending the problem didn't exist the last three dozen times she'd tried it in her life hadn't worked, there was no reason it wouldn't start working now.

They both looked at each other for a long time, Catra trying to look nonchalant. Frosta stared at her impassively.

"… This is about Adora, isn't it?"

"Oh, come on!" As she cried out, Catra's face morphed between several different states of surprise, frustration, sadness and relief so quickly that Frosta was sure she would either pull a muscle or pop a joint. "How is it that obvious to you?!"

"Well, you just told me." Frosta replied with a smug smirk.

Catra opened her mouth, closed her mouth, opened it again while raising a finger, then closed it again and settled on glaring at Frosta.

"I'm so gonna get you back for this, brat…" There was bite to her words, but Frosta could still here how tired they sounded under the bravado.

"I'm sure you'll try, fleabag." she retorted, ready to have a little verbal spar.

To her surprise, Catra didn't rise to it.

"Doing these pranks with you… It's been a blast." Catra smiled, and gently scoffed. "It's been fun to connect with someone like me. To have someone I can find something familiar to do with. It's reminded me of old times… And that's the problem. All of this… This is the kind of stuff I…"

Catra trailing off prompted Frosta to speak up now. "The kind of stuff you'd do with Adora?"

Catra tensed up, and then she slowly untensed again and looked off into the distance with a wan smile. "Yeah, when we were kids. We could get away with a little more as kids, but barely. We had some fun times, though… She really got me through a lot."

Then Catra's expression hardened and turned sour. "But… even then, even if we were kids having fun, Shadow Weaver made me hurt for it afterwards. She always made me hurt."

She sighed deeply, sounding very tired. Frosta felt a strange sensation in her stomach and realised with only mild surprise that it was pity. With what she had been told, she shouldn't pity Catra. But here and now, she found it hard not to.

"I couldn't let Shadow Weaver beat me, so I didn't stop. But I couldn't bear the pain of it, either. So, it stopped being about having fun with Adora, and became about spiting Shadow Weaver, and using Adora to lessen the punishment, however I could. She… I was supposed to be her friend, and I took that for granted."

Frosta didn't want to go down this road. If she followed this up, it would open her up to the one thing she'd told herself she couldn't afford to have: Doubt. She couldn't afford to doubt what she had been told by Adora about Catra. She couldn't afford to fall for what might well be a selfish, manipulative, greedy creature trying to win favour with her by playing the victim.

She couldn't let herself doubt, even if it made her feel so ill at ease to do so. She was the Princess of Snows! She had to be decisive!

…

But she was also a child. And sometimes, it paid to try and see things from that perspective. So, she cursed her own curiosity and set her shoulders.

"What exactly happened between you and Adora?"

The magicat gave a mirthless chuckle, and once again, Frosta didn't feel it right to interrupt just yet. For her part, Catra wasn't sure she could bear to give the details to Frosta in all their painful clarity. She tried, a little unconvincingly, to tell herself it was to spare the young princess from feeling sad after all the fun they'd had. That particular defence was thrown out of Catra's mental trial by guilt-trip without so much as a by your leave. But she had to say something; Frosta was owed that much, she supposed.

"It's hard, y'know? Letting go of my past. It still hurts to think about Adora. I hurt her so badly, it broke something in her. I want to prove I've changed. Every day, I try to be more than I was. And hey, it's not easy, right? But Adora… Adora only sees me as a monster, and a liar…"

Frosta watched, dumbfounded, as Catra's eyes misted up.

"What I've done to her… I regret it. All of it. If I could fix it, I would. I've changed."

Catra stopped for a second, and Frosta wondered what the magicat was thinking. Then Catra balled her hand into a fist and slammed it down on Glimmer's diary with a hard thwack.

"I've _changed_!" Catra raised her voice to somewhere below a shout. Her eyes were misting over. "I want to be different! I want to be more than I was in the Fright Zone, and it hurts! I hate what that place did to me, and I don't want to be that person anymore! I'm _not_ that person anymore! I'm _not_!"

Frosta scooted away from Catra, feeling that maybe she would appreciate having a bit more space to vent in. But even as she did so, Catra settled back down again, screwed her eyes shut and bowed her head in shame.

"But Adora… Adora was the one I hurt the most as who I was, and now… Now she doesn't want to see that I want to change. Or maybe she can't, I don't know! But she can only see me as a phoney and a freak, and I have to just accept that she's my enemy, and I'll always have to fight her when I should have stood by her, and I hate it!"

Catra raised her fist again, but she couldn't bring herself to slam it down on anything, and instead uncurled her hand and lay it over the cover of Glimmer's diary with care.

"Before all this… Before the Sword, and the Rebellion, and the Alliance… All I wanted was a place me and her could call the shots and be in charge. No one to tell us what to do. No one who could hurt us or manipulate us because they had power over us."

Catra's voice levelled out, mas if what she was saying reached some deeper, darker place of her mind. "So, I asked Angella for a kingdom. I want a land I can rule however I want, and never have to suck up to people who only see me as a tool, or a nuisance, or a threat. And back before all this… I wanted to have Adora rule alongside me. But she never wanted that. I was just too wrapped up in the dream to realise it."

"But you still want a kingdom?" Frosta asked. This was familiar territory, and Frosta felt she could walk it comfortably. This was the side of Catra she'd been told to expect, after all. It was convenient, she supposed to have gotten her to the point she would talk about it so openly.

Catra smirked again, but it was more like a grimace with how she felt. She straightened her back and took a deep, calming breath. "I guess. I mean, you already have one. Don't _you_ enjoy being at the top, being able to have control over things?"

In truth, she did, though Frosta found it suddenly quite hard to admit that to herself when framed by Catra's question. It made her uncomfortable to realise the privilege she had even as she questioned Catra's motivations.

"It's not just power. There's responsibilities and expectations that go with it." Frosta replied, choosing her words carefully. "Any other Princess will say the same."

Catra didn't respond, instead bringing her knees to her chest, Glimmer's diary placed at her side, and wrapped her arms around herself. Frosta made an authoritative decision that she should let Catra ruminate on the wisdom she had so graciously imparted, and they both sat there in silence for a little while.

This silence was spoiled by the sound of a screech of inarticulate rage that, by now, they both knew was from Glimmer. Neither of them was quite sure how she managed to project her voice so far across the castle, considering she had never done so before now. Later, when they reminisced on it, they would chalk it up to their antics unlocking some hidden potential of Glimmer's natural magic and congratulate themselves on having done their friend a favour after all.

For now, though, Catra unfurled herself and gently nodded, apparently coming to a decision in her head.

"I suppose. You'd know more about it than I would, anyway. I suppose that's the other side of this, really. I hate feeling like I had to prove myself all the time again, just like in the Horde, but… It's not like that here. It's better here. You and the others make it better. But I still have to be responsible for it, the good I've done here, and the bad. And I have to fight to protect it all from the one person I wanted here with me the most. As much as it'll always hurt to do that… I have to accept that I can't have back what I had before."

There were things she wanted to say, wanted to do, that Frosta couldn't even begin to. Her thoughts were running a turbo-charged carousel around her head and giving free rides to all the good little mini-Frostas who lived up there.

Catra had to be lying. That's what Adora would say, she knew. But now, Frosta felt the black and white of how things were supposed to be muddying into shades of grey again.

She saw flashes of the reckless, rude and rampaging ruffian who ruined the Princess Prom; of the selfish, unpleasant creature who had wound her up and dismissed her as a brat for so many weeks after the Battle of Bright Moon, and kept vital information from her allies…

The quiet, heartfelt young woman who'd confessed how much Frosta reminded her of when she was younger, and how she wanted her to be better than that; the Princess who, despite her stumbles and failures, was ready to risk everything to save the Rebellion and the others in the Princess Alliance; the prank buddy who had suddenly realised that she was letting herself fall back into old, bad habits, and hurting those she cared about.

Frosta felt like a snowflake tossed in a blizzard. And so, desiring an anchor, she did the only thing that seemed appropriate for the both of them: She reached over and placed a mitted hand over Catra's.

It was like time froze for just the span of a few breaths. Catra didn't react at first, and Frosta wondered if maybe she'd fallen for a trick after all.

Then, with unexpected care, Catra's claw-tipped fingers closed around Frosta's mitt and held on. She turned and looked at the Princess of Snows, her eyes shining a little, maybe from sadness, maybe from gratitude.

This was a moment of gentle reverie and connection between the two, where boundaries were changed, and maturity was fostered in the most dramatic of ways. It was a moment that both of them might think upon in trying times.

And then Glimmer appeared with a tinkling whoosh, and the moment was gone.

A spike of adrenaline went through the two in recognition as their heads snapped in sync to behold a very distressed-looking Glimmer. The sparkling princess's eyes were narrowed and bloodshot, her teeth bared. She was hunched ever so slightly over, every muscle in her figure taut with repressed outrage. Her arms were held ramrod straight down, and her hands curled into fists. She was breathing though her nose so heavily, it could be heard throughout the room.

Glimmer glared at Frosta and Catra. Frosta and Catra looked at Glimmer. No words were spoken, for none could be said that would not end in something bad happening.

Deciding that the ongoing staring competition was growing just a little too awkward for her liking, and keenly wanting to live up the outpouring she had shared with Frosta, Catra silently picked up and held out the diary in her free hand for Glimmer to take, along with a sad expression and a nod of understanding.

Glimmer's manic eyes darted from the book to Catra's face, and for a split-second, Catra could swear they softened, just a little. Then she closed them with a long, exhausted sigh, untensed her shoulders just enough that she could move her arms, and snatched her diary out of Catra's proffering hand. Using her other hand to perform a 'I've got my eyes on you' gesture to both Catra and Frosta, she vanished again, and left the prankster pair to sort themselves out.

They sat in solemn silence for a minute or two, taking stock of where things had gone.

Catra considered how her games had impacted her work to prove worthy of the power and responsibility of She-Ra. She concluded that, despite enjoying herself, she needed to temper those games better with her responsibilities in the future. But she didn't regret getting to know Frosta better and grow closer to her as a friend.

Frosta considered the things she had done, and what she was going to have to do now. Playing these pranks alongside Catra had, on some level, been to reaffirm her assumptions about Catra, but now her talk had shaken all those feelings up again. She almost felt more confused about how to deal with her than before.

Both had the same thought, independent of each other. They had had their fun, but now it no longer felt right to go on as they had. It was, perhaps, time to put aside childish things, if only for a little while.

Catra cleared her throat, stretched all over to the sound of joints popping, and then stood up with a relieved sigh.

"Alright, Princess," she began with a devious grin. "I think we need to start winning back some trust from the others."

"Hmph. And how are we gonna do that?" Frosta retorted with a cynically arched eyebrow.

"Well, first, we need to get the biggest bowl we can find, and a lot of water." Catra had a proper smile on her face once again, but now it seemed less scheming and more determined. "And then I'm gonna need your help in the War Room."

###

There had been plenty of time this morning between retrieving her diary and the upcoming Alliance meeting for Glimmer to sufficiently calm down, apologise to Bow for freaking him out, and collect her thoughts about what had happened.

She was still mad at Catra and Frosta, there was no denying that, but she no longer felt the pressing desire to tie them to the tallest spire in all of Bright Moon and leave them dangling in the breeze until nightfall. At least, not as her first option. Maybe her third.

She was also convinced that they had read the diary out to each other before she had recovered it. She had checked that all the pages were still there, just to be safe, but there was one detail that she pondered on.

"Do you really think Catra gave it back because of what you wrote?" Bow asked her. They were both making their way to the War Room for the meeting that morning. On top of the anticipation of news of their efforts to fight the Horde, good or bad, a sense of exhaustion had come upon the Princess Alliance in response to Catra and Frosta's antics.

"I hope so." Glimmer's voice had a curiously optimistic edge to it. "I mean, it's supposed to be private stuff, so I'm still upset… but I think she must have felt she had to stop. She wouldn't have given it back without making fun of it otherwise."

"You have a point." Bow replied with a shrug, a tiny smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.

It was as they passed into the final hallway before the entrance to the War Room that Glimmer picked out, just on the edge of her hearing, the sound of whispering. She held up her hand to stop Bow, and she listened more closely.

"Hey, I think someone's coming. Quick, get in place!" That was Catra's voice, Glimmer was certain.

"Alright, don't push me, I'm going!" And that was Frosta's.

Fear ran through Glimmer, as she considered what might happen if Catra and Frosta tried something new in the War Room today. She couldn't protect them from her mother's anger anymore. As she considered what they might be trying to set up, she wondered why the guards hadn't put a stop to anything. There would definitely be guards in there; there always were.

The frantic whispering was disrupted as Glimmer heard the rest of the Princesses in attendance approaching, the murmurs, sighs and chuckles of casual conversation drowning out anything else to be heard.

Feeling exasperated and wanting to see what the damage was before the others got there, Glimmer marched up to the entrance way at a brisk pace and went into the room, preparing herself for the worst.

She stopped in the entrance, her eyes wide and her mouth open in genuine surprise.

The room appeared mostly normal and untroubled. The guards were surrounding the room as normal, impassive and unmoving in their duty. Even the general was sat in her chair around the table, taking in the same sight as her with an expression somewhere between bemused and proud. Catra and Frosta were also sat down, doing their best to look nonchalant, which was going about as well as could be expected.

What took up most of Glimmer's attention, though, was the massive bowl placed on top of the War Room's table. And sitting in the bowl, reaching up higher than even the tallest of the surrounding chairs, was one of the most chaotically striking ice sculptures Glimmer had ever seen.

Raised from the bowl, the ice had been shaped and sculpted into a wild but vibrant collection of familiar shapes; In roughly the same style as the great murals adorning the walls, several figures, bearing resemblance to the princesses of the Alliance, as well as Bow, Sea Hawk and Queen Angella, all stood united in a beatific group, tall and resolute. Glimmer noticed that effigies of Catra and Frosta were conspicuous by their not being there.

It would have taken a lot of water in the bowl to make up the carved ice on display now. The water had been frozen and raised up into its initial shape by Frosta, Glimmer guessed, and then Catra must have carved any fine detail into it herself. The fact that Catra appeared to be sitting on her hands suggested she was trying to warm them back up.

Glimmer found she didn't have the words to say anything, so she just stood there, mouth agape. Bow stood next to her, similarly mute. The pair didn't even stir when the rest of the Princess Alliance arrived behind them, took in the spectacle in the War Room, and all had fairly similar reactions. A few little gasps and hums of surprise could be heard.

The last to walk in was Queen Angella, looking remarkably well-rested. She took in the sight of the sculpture and its makers, looking taken back, and put a hand to her chest in surprise.

"Hey everyone!" Frosta waved at the others and grinned cheerfully.

Perfuma and Spinnerella both waved back at her, but everyone else eyed the pranksters warily.

"So, what are you two up to now?" Mermista folded her arms and arched an eyebrow accusingly.

"Nothing this time, I promise." Catra stood up from her chair to face the gathering Princess Alliance.

Angella made her way in front of the assembled onlookers, still transfixed by the sculpture. "How… did you even set this up without anyone noticing?"

"We didn't," Frosta replied. "We asked the general to watch over us, and prove we weren't just pulling another prank." Still smiling at the situation, the general simply nodded at her queen to confirm that this was true.

"I mean, sure, but what if it's just a distraction for the real prank?" Netossa asked, frowning sceptically.

"There's no prank. I just promised." Catra said, keeping her tone level and serious. "We've both got something we need to say, and I figured something nice might, y'know, show we meant it."

Glimmer felt a rising sensation of hope and relief spreading in her chest. She couldn't help but let a tiny, tiny smile creep onto one corner of her mouth.

Catra took a deep breath, clearly having to work herself up to saying what she wanted to. She looked briefly over at Frosta, and the Princess of Snows nodded, clearly giving her encouragement and leave to speak on her behalf. With that, Catra straightened her back, and turned back to the assembled Alliance.

"So, me and Frosta have realised that maybe trying get all of you to lighten up has been upsetting you all. I mean, hey, we just wanted to show you we can still _have_ fun. With how serious everyone is, I just thought you guys could use a good laugh or something, or some way to get a decent chuckle around here every once in a while. But... I didn't think you guys would be against it this much, so... I'm sorry. If you guys really aren't up for having fun like this, I understand."

With a shuffling sound Frosta pushed herself from her chair and went to stand by her prank buddy.

"To cut a long story short, we're sorry. For real this time." Frosta patted Catra's arm with the back of her hand as she summed up the speech.

The others gathered in front of the pair didn't react immediately. They all looked between each other, clearly trying and failing to have some strange and communal psychic conversation about how to proceed with this situation.

Angella looked between Catra and Frosta, and the sculpture, then settled her gaze on the general. "You saw them do nothing untoward, general?"

"Nothing, Your Majesty. They asked me to watch over them as they worked. I had the guards check the room and the castle for any hidden surprises, and there found none. With what they've done before, there's a chance they might have something hidden, but with the lengths they've gone to with me, I'm inclined to believe that they want to make amends."

Angella nodded gratefully at the general and turned back to the two pranksters. She stared them down with the incredible calm and insight of a leader. Both Catra and Frosta both met her gaze back, neither of them turning away, both fully resolved to convey their sincerity.

Glimmer observed the moment with a flicker of some deep, animal excitement. A moment's anticipation hung in the air about the Princess Alliance as they all did the same.

Angella finally made her move. She laughed. It was a lovely sound, light and soft and genuine. It was the laughter of joy and relief.

It shocked almost everyone else present, not least of all Catra, whose eyes widened, and pupils dilated at the unexpected reaction. Then, as the sensation overtook her, she began to laugh as well. A warm and trusting feeling flooded her body, and she shared in the Queen of Bright Moon's humour.

Then Frosta joined in, and Glimmer found she couldn't help but do the same. The catharsis of the whole affair being resolved gave it all an absurd new feel, and an outlet had been needed. Soon enough, those in the room inclined to it were sharing the silliness of the moment together in laughter.

As the giggles and guffaws slowly wound down, Angella reached out and put a hand on both Catra's and Frosta's shoulders. She smiled and sighed. It wasn't the same sigh she's used for weeks now, filled with exasperation and anger. Now, it sounded quite relieved.

"I'm glad you chose to do this, the pair of you. I shan't expect that you will never pull another prank again, but… Yes, I am glad we can all have a break."

As she finished speaking, the tension in the room evaporated, and everyone remembered to move again. The princesses and their allies went up to the table and took their various seats. No disagreements were had over who sat where. No hidden surprises revealed themselves as everyone settled down.

"Y'know…" Everyone looked over at Netossa, who spoke with a smile as she looked at Catra. "For what's it's worth, I think we understand what you two were trying to do, at least, even if we don't need to be having fun around here constantly."

"Well said," added Spinnerella, placing her hand on her partner's as a sign of her approval.

"I agree!" Perfuma nodded and grinned. "Though we all did not resonate with the intentions you had, with time and care, we shall share in your joy and levity."

Mermista shrugged. "Yeah, like, I'm not gonna get all touchy-feely about it, but they're right. It could be a laugh some other time."

Glimmer and Bow said nothing, but they beamed as wide as they could and nodded.

Everyone sat with each other, reflecting on what had happened, and maybe admired the sculpture the Princess of Power and the Princess of Snows had both worked to make.

It was, like the others presented in this tale, dear reader, a lovely moment for everyone involved.

"Uh, Catra, Frosta, there's just one thing?" Glimmer was still smiling as she asked the question.

Both Catra and Frosta turned to her, still smiling broadly. "What's up, Glimmer?" Catra said, mirth filling her words.

"You two do realise that putting the bowl there means we can't use the map now, right?"

In her corner, the general closed her eyes, smile spreading into a grin, and shook her head. Both magicat and ice princess's eyes widened, and then Catra let loose an expletive completely unfit for recording here, lest it offend the delicate sensibilities of children or those of a nervous disposition.

It wasn't long, though, before Glimmer helpfully teleported the sculpture off the table, everyone had another laugh about the whole affair. And the war council resumed without issue. And that, dear reader, saw an end to this chapter of strange, surreal, but nonetheless sportive events in the chronicles of the Rebellion and the Princess Alliance.

Or rather, it should have, for there is one last detail to be shared.

###

Catra woke up feeling groggy, almost like she's spent the night partying too hard.

She dragged herself out of her bed and shuffled across the room to her vanity. Her body felt… different. It felt heavier than usual, and the balance was off. What had happened yesterday that made her feel like this? She didn't remember doing anything strange or having anything strange happen to her.

She, Glimmer and Bow had spent the evening in her bedroom, and Glimmer had even bought in a tray of drinks from somewhere, which had gone down a treat. Catra had felt especially cosy after finishing the contents of the cup provided. Now she couldn't help but wander if something had been wrong with it?

She moved to sit on the cushioned seat in front of her mirror and tried to focus on her features and see if anything needed grooming.

A stranger's face squinted back at her. As her eyes went wide in shock, so did the stranger's.

Catra yelped, and lurched backwards, falling off the seat onto the floor. She tried to get up, still sluggish and unbalanced, and looked in the mirror again. It was still not her face that looked back.

It was a completely human face, for a start. The skin was paler than her own, and the usual coating of short, soft fur that covered her body had vanished. Her hair, while still messy, had changed to a full set of slightly curled golden locks. Her fingers no longer ended in claws, but shiny translucent fingernails. Her eyes still bore her heterochromia, but only in her now human irises, with her now also having white sclerae and round pupils.

She was, undoubtedly, completely human in appearance. Which would also mean that…

On instinct, her hands went behind her to the small of her back, and she found that where there should have been something poking out there, now there was nothing except a hole in her uniform where that something should have been.

"WHERE'S MY TAIL?!" Catra screeched.

In a panic, she overbalanced and fell to the floor with another yelp. She scrabbled about herself, before shakily standing back up and clinging to the edge of the vanity, looking at her new human face again.

How in the name of Etheria and all the stars that it didn't have had this happened?!

The only explanation she could think of was… the drink! The drink last night that Glimmer had given her…

Catra sucked in a breath.

"GLIMMEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEER!"

In her own bedroom, Princess Glimmer's eyes snapped open, and she frowned, confused as to why Catra would be calling her name so loudly, even after the weeks of doing the reverse in kind.

And Queen Angella, who had felt it best to wake up early this morning, sipped her tea delicately and smiled deviously as she heard the payoff to her handiwork. Poor Glimmer, bless her, had been totally unsuspecting as her mother gave her the drinks for the three of them, and helpfully pointed out which cup was for whom.

She glanced over at the glass bottle sat half full on her vanity, hoping that the assurance its effects would wear off after twenty-four hours would prove true.

After all, the enchanted earplugs weren't the only magical item she had requested of Castaspella. And even if Catra had decided to put her little pranks on hold for now, turnabout was always still fair play.

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: And that is all they wrote! It's been fun to write this as a homage to Monokub's ongoing story, and to be able to contribute something of my own to the AU they have created in Cat-Ra.
> 
> Also, for those inclined to such things, I included some direct references to other fictional works in the writing. If anyone can spot them, I'll be quite pleased.
> 
> I hope those of you who read this enjoyed it. Don't forget to check out the story that inspired it, either here or on FanFiction.net, and the art of Peterson Muldoon on Instagram, whether it be fan art of Cat-Ra or his own original work.
> 
> Tatty-bye!


End file.
